News round up: Million poor pupils denied free meals

Teenage pregnancies rise

The number of teenage pregnancies rose last year, despite the government’s attempts to increase sex education and contraception awareness.
Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Inquest begins into death of disabled man

The father of a severely disabled man, whose decomposed remains were discovered in a suitcase, told an inquest today that he had repeatedly tried to see his son in the months before his death.

Paul Hughes told the inquest that he had been unable to visit his 22-year-old son James after 28 December last year, and that his former partner, James’s mother, Heather ­Wardle, had given a series of excuses.
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Iraqi sewed up mouth in failed bid to avoid deportation

A Kurdish asylum seeker who sewed up his mouth in an attempt to avoid being returned to Iraq last week had the stitches forcibly removed and was still put on the plane the next day, it emerged yesterday.

He was among 49 rejected asylum seekers who were put on a special charter flight to northern Iraq last Wednesday, which took off six hours late from Stansted and was forced to return to Britain after being refused permission to land in Iraq.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Jails get go-ahead to continue using pain to control children

Children’s organisations last night reacted angrily to a decision to allow privately run child jails to continue to use pain-inflicting techniques to restrain young offenders in their care “in exceptional circumstances”.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Only one in ten with multiple sclerosis is being treated with key drug

Only around one in 10 of those who are eligible for a new drug to treat multiple sclerosis are getting it, even though it was approved a year ago for use in the NHS, the Guardian has been told.

Natalizumab, which goes by the brand name Tysabri, is the first drug that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence has approved for multiple sclerosis.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Million poor pupils denied free meals

A million children living below the poverty line do not receive free school meals as a result of flaws in the funding system, figures released in parliament show.

Half of pupils from families in poverty are not getting a free lunch because the income threshold to qualify is set lower than the current level used to define poverty. It means that a family of two adults and two children struggling to get by on £18,000 a year has to pay for school dinners, which now cost on average £1.70 a day per child. Children at schools in every local authority in England are affected.